Conspiracy Boy (Angel Academy) (9 page)

Yup.

The rest of the afternoon was spent fleeing for our lives and explaining to Animal Control how a rabid spider monkey had managed to get free inside the museum.

I shook off the memory and pulled my gaze back to the street as a vague wave of nausea settled in my belly. Because right in the spot where Luc used to be now lay a curiously empty patch of concrete.

Chapter Ten:

Evil Is as Evil Does

At first glance, it looked like any other flat, bricked-up surface. Boring. Worn in odd patches and marked with water stains from the Katrina floodwaters. It wasn’t until I narrowed my gaze and cocked my chin down an inch that I saw it.

A shimmer.

That was all. Not much, but enough to let me know someone with serious power had bothered to ward an entrance there. A mixture of determination and idiocy invaded me as I crossed the street to the building. Of course, Luc wouldn’t use the front door. If anyone was stupid enough to walk through the front door of something that heavily warded, probably all they’d see was a dusty foyer. Maybe a few roaches.

What shook me was that I hadn’t noticed the wards sooner. Were the warders getting better, or was I losing my touch? My hands gave a telltale tingle as I spread them over the brick surface. Definitely powered by Crossworlds energy.

“
Vide veritas,
” I whispered, and the brick gave a shudder.

Nobody else would have seen it. In fact, if anyone had been watching, all they would have seen was a moronic, pathologically pale schoolgirl making hand-puppet moon shadows on a wall. Which is all I wanted them to see.

“Abertura.”

A soft whoosh of air whistled past as the secret door opened, and I stepped into the brick. Power crackled over my skin—uncomfortable, but nothing compared to the zip I’d gotten off St. Michael’s school wards lately.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust.

I’m not sure what I’d expected to see when things finally blinked into focus. Dancing bears? A demon rave party? Whatever I’d anticipated, it certainly wasn’t Veronica Manning in a hot pink sports bra, in the middle of a boxing ring, going toe-to-toe with a thirteen-year-old werewolf.

No kidding.

A pink sports bra.

“Watch it, fur ball. You broke my nail,” she shrieked and launched herself at the terrified were-teen.

Who, shockingly enough, launched himself right back.

It was like one of those scenes in a cartoon, where there’s just a big scuffle of movement and dust and fur, and even though you can’t see a darned thing, you can be reasonably sure someone’ll emerge with the tar beat out of them.

Utterly flummoxed, I took a moment to assess the surroundings.

It was a clumsily assembled space, with cheap plywood walls and a swinging door at the far end that hung on its hinge at a tilt. The door had a paper sign taped to it, hastily scrawled with the words
Coffee Lounge (Decaf Only)
. Not that I would want to drink coffee in there anyway, but the decaf sure solidified it.

A bulletin board covered most of the left wall, with pages of paper covered in names hung in organized rows. It almost looked like a bookie’s office, with names paired against one another, then the loser’s name scratched out and the winner’s carried to the column below.

What the heck was this, anyway, an interspecies fight club?

“
Separate.
” An authoritative voice sounded from the corner opposite mine.

My ears perked up. I knew that voice, and not just from the phone call with Luc. It scratched at the back of my head like an emery board. Staying in the nook near the entry, I rose on tiptoes to see over the boxing ring.

“Self-restraint,” he said as the shadows began to shift. “Every Guardian you encounter will be meticulously trained in self-discipline. Emotion corrupts control. It’s a weakness in battle. If you lose control for even an instant, you will die.”

Yup, I knew that voice. Almost as well as I knew that face—squared features, warm teddy-bear eyes, cheeks that make you want to pinch them and make baby noises. The difference was, every other time I’d looked at him, all I had seen was a friend.

Tonight, for the first time, I saw a fighter.

Matt’s hair stuck out in chaotic patches, and the lean muscles of his back and shoulders bulged beneath a thin white T-shirt. Even his jeans looked rugged and well-worn, certainly nothing Lisa would have dressed him in. I couldn’t help staring. This was
not
a version of Matt I’d seen before. This guy looked comfortable. And in charge.

“Unreal,” I breathed then clapped a hand over my mouth.

Totally pointless. I might as well have shouted it. Every head in the room—over a dozen, as it turned out—swiveled to stare at me.

You know those moments when you realize you’ve screwed up royally, and no matter how hard you close your eyes and wish, the universe steadfastly refuses to rewind itself so you can have a fifteen-second do-over?

Uh-huh. Just like that.

Katie, with her rough-shorn hair and newly muscled arms, took a defiant stance. Veronica planted one hand at her hip and leveled me with a glare I hadn’t seen since Lisa left. Skye—who had apparently come with Veronica—looked ready to bolt for the door. Or the magical wall exit, whatever.

Even the were-teen in the fighting ring didn’t move except to cock an eyebrow. He was one of the kids Jack never let fight because they were too young or too green or too wild. But the way he eyed me today, all purposeful and determined, he didn’t look wild. He looked focused.

Matt sighed and climbed out of the ring.

“Touch me and you burn,” I said, by way of greeting.

He smirked, but stopped a few feet away from me, just in case. “Would the Council condone you attacking an off-grid Watcher?”

“Do I care what the Council says?”

That made him smile wider. “That’s my girl.”

For a second, we looked at each other. It was weird, seeing him again. Of course, the weirdest thing was that, in a lot of ways, it wasn’t weird at all. He was still just Matt. Lisa’s perpetual ex-boyfriend. The guy who could make me smile even in the darkest of situations. And suddenly, we were friends again, hanging out in a warehouse, ready to kick some demon ass.

“I missed you, Ami.”

Matt opened his arms for a hug, which I walked into without hesitation. Luc slouched against the left wall near the bulletin board, looking smug. Over Matt’s shoulder, I mouthed to him, “Thank you.”

He did a little twirl with his hand and bowed, then retreated back to his slouchy position.

“So, does someone want to tell me what’s going on here?” I asked when we’d all finished having our moment.

Nobody said a word for the longest time, then Veronica replied, “We’re training.”

“For what?
Teen Wolf
fight scenes?”

The were-kid in the ring chuckled until Vee shot him a glare. “For the war, duh. Where have
you
been?”

I looked at Matt. “Is she sniffing hair product?”

“Not in the last few hours. Well, at least not the last thirty minutes,” he corrected himself.

Across the room, Luc rolled his eyes. “Marino, you’re in charge. The rest of you, carry on.”

Nimble as a deer, Matt leaped onto the ledge of the fighting ring and rounded the outer perimeter. This time I didn’t argue when Luc took my hand and guided me down the makeshift hallway to the office. Or the coffee lounge…whatever you wanted to call it. Shivers shot through my fingers, but nothing lit up. Thank heaven.

I waited until he closed the door before I said, “Really?”

“You’re upset,” he guessed.

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

Luc slumped against the doorframe, hands pocketed. It looked casual, but there was a slight flush to his cheeks. “Things are complicated, Amelie. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Not surprising, since you tell me nothing.”

“I let you follow me here, didn’t I?”

“I would have done that anyway. Or weren’t you listening?” It was all I could do not to smack him. “Do you honestly think I don’t need to know about my friends being dragged into illegal training sessions for an imaginary war that doesn’t exist? What in the world is wrong with you?”

“First off, yes, I was listening. Not very well, but I was,” he said. “Secondly, that’s redundant. By definition, an imaginary war doesn’t exist. As for the third question—” He folded his arms across his infuriatingly well-defined chest. “How long have you got?”

I’m not proud of it, but the blasé attitude annoyed me enough that I let a tiny trickle of power in. My fingers crackled with energy. My wrists burned with it. Even my heart seemed to stutter and pick up speed as I raised my hand an inch from his throat. He still didn’t move.

“Luc?”

“Yes, love?”

“Tell me what you’re planning.”

“Who says I’m planning anything?”

“Don’t make me hurt you.”

“Don’t tease me.”

I would have offered a more torturous and specific threat if I’d had time, but it was at that moment I got interrupted. “You can’t kill him, sweetheart. We need him.”

I whipped around at the sound of the words, and instantly, the power rage dissipated. I might’ve gasped, “Daddy,” or made some other equally embarrassing, infantile, squeaky noise. I honestly can’t remember. The only thing that registered was the
whoosh
of air as I flung myself at him from across the room. Followed by the impossibly familiar feeling of disappearing into his arms.

And, instantly, everything was okay. Fairy tales existed, happy endings were guaranteed, and the world felt warm again. I squeezed him tighter.

“
Oof,
” he said. “Been lifting weights?”

“I missed you. Where were you?”

Instead of answering, Bud brushed his hand over my hair as he inhaled. It was a move I remembered Mom pulling years ago. I used to wonder why she was always sniffing me, and I actually asked her one day. She said she was trying to memorize my scent. I don’t think I fully understood that before this moment.

I pressed my face into Bud’s shirt.

Cedar chips. Briefcase leather. Scotch whisky. And just a touch of something indefinably office-like. Loose-leaf paper, maybe. All the things I’d come to associate with Dad’s scent. It settled over my heart like a warm blanket.

“Daddy, for real, what are you doing here? Should I yell at you, too?”

His chest rumbled with soft laughter. “Don’t suppose you’d believe I popped in on the way to the grocery?”

I shook my head but didn’t let him go. I didn’t ever want to let him go again.

“Ah, baby,” he said. “Luc? Want to fill her in?”

“I suspect she knows.” Behind me, Luc shifted away from the door.

I lifted my gaze to meet his, but he looked away. Maybe Luc wasn’t
trying
to piss me off—he certainly didn’t sound like he was. But did he really think this was the time for cryptic word puzzles?

“What do I know? English, please, dude.”

“On the contrary, I speak English every day. Not that you listen.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, loosening my hold on Bud. “You’re kind of a jerk sometimes, you know that?”

“I never denied it,” he replied.

Dad sighed. “Baby, just hear him out. Luc, why don’t you show her around? Let her meet some of our recruits. Maybe she’ll understand better if she sees what we’re working toward. And you two try to be nice to each other, okay? We need all the help we can get.”

Bud disentangled himself from my death grip while I tried to work out the nuance of that last sentence.

Since when did Luc and my
father
constitute a “we”? For that matter, since when did my dad work with hellspawn? Granted, that was an iffy question, since he’d been a lawyer most of my life. But there’s a
huge
difference between a bloodthirsty lawyer and a bloodthirsty vampire. The second is way more literal.

“Fine, show me around.”

I moved to stand by Luc, who took a deliberate yet subtle step away from me. If you weren’t looking for it, you might not have noticed it. But to me, it was louder than bombs.

“As you wish.” He pried open the door then let it slam behind him.

Honestly, it was a wonder that thing stayed on its hinges. It gave an unholy groan before it swung shut behind me. As an afterthought, I popped my head back in.

“Hey, Daddy?”

Bud looked up.

“Don’t leave, okay? At least not without saying good-bye. I need to ask you something.”

He grinned, his eyes half lit with that mischievous George Clooney sparkle. “You got it, baby.”

I returned the grin, though I’m pretty sure it didn’t reach past my lips. The truth was, all I wanted was to chuck myself into his arms and stay there until I woke up and this whole crapstorm faded into a distant memory.

It took Luc less than a second to get back to the ring where Matt had transitioned Veronica and the teenage werewolf to the sidelines and pulled Katie into the center. He was demonstrating a defensive hold designed to immobilize a Channeler.

“If their hands are bound,” Matt explained, “they have a much harder time directing the channel. They can still call power from the Crossworlds, but it’ll stay diffuse, so it’s less likely to kill you and more likely to reverberate back into them. Most Channelers won’t try casting if they can’t control the direction of their power. Katie?”

My former BFF nodded. “
Incendia,
” she called, and Matt’s pant leg sprang into flames.

It was like watching the bottom of a campfire, when the kindling takes and the fire starts to spread. First up his ankle, then to his knee.

“
Sine luce,
” she yelled, and one of the lightbulbs overhead exploded, showering glass shards into the fighting ring.

Matt yelped and sprang back, knocking Katie to the ground.

“
Sine,
” I called, flinging the spell at his leg before the flames could lick any farther. The fire damped to a blue sparkle and then went out altogether. Around the room, newbies applauded like this was part of the show.

“And that, ladies and gents, is what results from a lifetime of wreaking havoc on the academic establishment.” Matt shot me a broad, welcoming smile. “So, what’s the lesson here, people?”

The scrawny werewolf who’d fought with Veronica raised his hand.

“Evan?”

“Wreaking havoc is good?” the boy asked.

Matt considered that. “I was thinking ‘repetition breeds expertise,’” he said. “But yeah. Wreaking havoc has its benefits.”